How MakeMyTrip is planning to get bigger and better

MakeMyTrip raised about $70 million from the market, and there has been an acquisition of $3 million. You will put another $0.75 million into this new purchase for the next few years. How do you intend to deploy the rest of the money that was raised?

To be precise, we raised $80.5 million with the full green shoe (overallotment option), but all of that was not in the company. A lot of that money belonged to some of our private investors' selling.

So, in the company we had about $56 million. We are scouting and spending a lot of time on other acquisition opportunities.

We are also using the money for technology upgrades as well as working capital. But the bulk of what we have raised is clearly to be used for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) because we are cash-flow positive.

How MakeMyTrip is planning to get bigger and better

There is an increasing tendency for Indians to travel to countries within a 5-6 hour flight range. What sort of growth do you see in this region?

Outbound travel, in general, is growing by 20 per cent year-on-year. But in this sector it is even higher.

This is the fastest growing region with any significant base for outbound Indian travellers by far.

Low-cost carriers are connecting India to Southeast Asia more frequently. Even Indigo is planning to begin operation in this zone later this year. Do you see these factors further pushing up the numbers of Indians travelling here?

The advantage this region has, barring Singapore which has a lot of rooms with a high price-point, particularly Thailand and Malaysia, are the hotel prices, which is not available elsewhere in the world. This opens up a lot of opportunities.